Technology Blogs by SAP
Learn how to extend and personalize SAP applications. Follow the SAP technology blog for insights into SAP BTP, ABAP, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP HANA, and more.
cancel
Turn on suggestions
Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type.
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

SAP UX Q1/2025 Update – Part 2: SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502 and SAP Fiori Launchpad

ThomasReiss
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎2025 Feb 14 5:00 AM
1,944

This second post in the series gives an overview of user experience innovations in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502 and the SAP Fiori launchpad. It covers Joule and many AI-based UX innovations, new collaboration capabilities as well as improvements in details.

Before reading this, do read the first blog post introducing the series and providing general information about Joule and central entry points and services:

The latest release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition comes with a large number of new AI-enabled user experience enhancements. I’ll give you an overview, starting with generic new capabilities applicable to all or many users,  such as Joule and the My Home page in the SAP Fiori launchpad, before moving to innovations relevant for applications built with SAP Fiori elements as well as some individual application highlights. They are grouped into these sections:

  • Joule
  • SAP Fiori Launchpad and My Home
  • Collaboration: Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Copilot Integration
  • AI-based UX Innovations for SAP Fiori Apps
  • Situation Handling
  • UX Improvements in Details

Many of the UX improvements in details are enabled by our UI framework (SAPUI5 and SAP Fiori elements) and hence also available to customers and partners developing their own applications.

This video summarizes the main AI innovations which came with the 2502 release, the What’s New Viewer lists all the new UX features, and the blog post summarizes the new AI features supported by SAP Fiori elements technology:

Beta testing: Some of the new features presented below are only available via beta programs, not (yet) for productive use. If you are interested in testing any of the AI-assisted innovations, you can register here.

Joule

Generally Available

Joule is now generally available with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502.

Figure 1 shows examples for the three patterns available today with Joule. With the transactional pattern, you can use Joule to access application data directly, as well as getting an overview of your situations from business situation handling. Joule can also give you navigation links to relevant applications, either at the end of the list of results, or in response to a direct “Where can I…” question. With the informational pattern, you can query the documentation and get a brief summary along with up to three direct links to the source document(s).

Figure 1: Examples of Joule patterns in use in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. ALT Text: The image shows side by side two examples of the Transactional pattern, one Navigational and one Informational. #1 shows a list of sales orders, with ID and Sold-To-Party and an “Open” button, plus the prompt “Show me the most recent situations I should focus on first”. #2 shows the response: two cards with five-line details of each situation plus an indication of how many hours ago they were created. #3 shows the prompt “Where can I see sales orders issues?” and the reply which lists one app “Sales Order Fulfillment Issues (Version 2)” along with an “Open” button. #4 shows the prompt “Can I create a sales order from a pdf file?” and a seven-line answer “Yes, cou can…”, along with a link to the source document with its source “SAP Help Portal”.Figure 1: Examples of Joule patterns in use in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. ALT Text: The image shows side by side two examples of the Transactional pattern, one Navigational and one Informational. #1 shows a list of sales orders, with ID and Sold-To-Party and an “Open” button, plus the prompt “Show me the most recent situations I should focus on first”. #2 shows the response: two cards with five-line details of each situation plus an indication of how many hours ago they were created. #3 shows the prompt “Where can I see sales orders issues?” and the reply which lists one app “Sales Order Fulfillment Issues (Version 2)” along with an “Open” button. #4 shows the prompt “Can I create a sales order from a pdf file?” and a seven-line answer “Yes, cou can…”, along with a link to the source document with its source “SAP Help Portal”.

Available Soon

Currently planned for Q1/2025 (with the usual disclaimer that plans can change): If a user regularly wants a specific overview of their data, such as blocked sales orders, or open orders for their top customers, they can use Joule to create insights cards for these queries and add them directly to the My Home page in the SAP Fiori launchpad. Watch an example below in Figure 2:

Figure 2: Using Joule to create an Insights Card and add it to My Home in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502. ALT Text: A short video embedded showing how a user enters the prompt “Please create a card for open sales orders for customer 10100003, including their ID, overall status and delivery date”. Joule then asks “What type of card would you like to create?” with buttons for “List” and “Table”. The user selects “List”, and a preview of the list is shown, along with buttons “Add card to My Home” and “Redo”. After selecting “Add..” the card is added as the leftmost Insights Card.Figure 2: Using Joule to create an Insights Card and add it to My Home in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502. ALT Text: A short video embedded showing how a user enters the prompt “Please create a card for open sales orders for customer 10100003, including their ID, overall status and delivery date”. Joule then asks “What type of card would you like to create?” with buttons for “List” and “Table”. The user selects “List”, and a preview of the list is shown, along with buttons “Add card to My Home” and “Redo”. After selecting “Add..” the card is added as the leftmost Insights Card.

Watch this video to see all of the above examples in action:

SAP Fiori Launchpad and My Home

Automatic high-contrast and dark-mode detection, also for custom themes

Users can define on their front-end device’s operating system whether applications should appear in a light mode or a dark mode, or a high-contrast mode. Now SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system takes these settings into account also for custom themes, in addition to SAP visual themes.

Technically this is done by the SAP Fiori launchpad supporting theme sets, which is a group of themes of the same family with different flavors – such as the Horizon theme, with a light and dark version along with high contrast black and high contrast white versions. Customers can create their own theme sets using the UI theme designer. Have a look at the documentation:

Hiding empty pages and spaces

The apps which a user sees on a page on the SAP Fiori launchpad, and the pages which appear in a space, depend on a user’s authorizations. This can lead to a page being defined in such a way that certain users are not authorized to use any of the apps therein; similarly, a space can end up not having any pages available to a user. Now, if this happens, any such empty pages or spaces are hidden from the user, rather than being shown empty. Find out more here:

My Home shows Situations from the extended framework

Custom situations created using the Situation Handling extended framework are now also shown in the To-Dos section of My Home, along with the standard situations.

Improved About Dialog for Application Information

We have simplified the about screen, organizing it into separate tabs for Application, System and Environment information, so that there is a clear separation between the different types of information – see it in action in Figure 3:

Figure 3: New About dialog. ALT Text: A short video showing the list view of the Manage Sales Orders – Version 2 app. The user opens the user settings menu in the shell header bar, selects “about”, and a popover appears with the same design as the user settings, showing three separate tabs listed vertically on the left for “Application”, “System” and “Environment”, with “Application” the default. Application shows title and ID of the app, along with framework version; System shows the product, system and tenant name; Environment shows the client device type and user agent details.Figure 3: New About dialog. ALT Text: A short video showing the list view of the Manage Sales Orders – Version 2 app. The user opens the user settings menu in the shell header bar, selects “about”, and a popover appears with the same design as the user settings, showing three separate tabs listed vertically on the left for “Application”, “System” and “Environment”, with “Application” the default. Application shows title and ID of the app, along with framework version; System shows the product, system and tenant name; Environment shows the client device type and user agent details.

Improvements for Administrators

Improvements for Developers at Customers and Partners

Customers and partners can now create launchpad-related object types in the ABAP development tools for Eclipse. For more details on this and the new developer guide, refer to

Beta: AI-Assisted Enterprise Search

This is an example of the AI pattern Interacting via natural language with your application. In this case, you can use natural language in the search field available at the top of every screen in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, making it even easier to benefit from powerful enterprise search capabilities.

Figure 4: AI-Assisted Enterprise Search (Beta) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502. ALT Text: A short video showing how a user can enter in the search field in the shell header bar “Show me all sales orders with net value greater than 5000 eur” and get a corresponding list sales orders. The user than adds the text “that are in process” resulting in a list with fewer results.Figure 4: AI-Assisted Enterprise Search (Beta) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502. ALT Text: A short video showing how a user can enter in the search field in the shell header bar “Show me all sales orders with net value greater than 5000 eur” and get a corresponding list sales orders. The user than adds the text “that are in process” resulting in a list with fewer results.

Watch the full video:

Beta: AI-Assisted Personalization: Adding Insights Cards

If you are on your My Home page at the Insights section, you can directly create new cards there with AI-assistance, without having to go via Joule. This is another example of the AI pattern Interacting via natural language with your application. Have a look here:

Collaboration: Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Copilot Integration    

To-Dos in Microsoft Teams

Important notifications should not go unnoticed, so we help to ensure that by providing an additional way for users to be notified about To-Dos from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Tasks which are shown on My Home can now also pushed to users via Microsoft Teams, where they show up as new activities – see Figure 5. As you can see, not only are users notified directly in Teams, they also get direct access to their task embedded in Teams and can take direct action, such as approve or reject a request.

Figure 5: Tasks from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition appearing as activities in Microsoft Teams. ALT Text: The “Activity” tab in Microsoft Teams is shown , with a list showing on the left one activity “New tasks in SAP S/4HANA – There is 1 new task for you – ToDos” and on the right embedded within Teams the screen from My Inbox, showing the header data plus a list of Items and Bidders, and action buttons at the bottom for Approve, Reject, Show Log, Claim, Forward and Suspend.Figure 5: Tasks from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition appearing as activities in Microsoft Teams. ALT Text: The “Activity” tab in Microsoft Teams is shown , with a list showing on the left one activity “New tasks in SAP S/4HANA – There is 1 new task for you – ToDos” and on the right embedded within Teams the screen from My Inbox, showing the header data plus a list of Items and Bidders, and action buttons at the bottom for Approve, Reject, Show Log, Claim, Forward and Suspend.

See it in action here:

Beta: Microsoft Copilot Integration (Beta)

When collaborating with colleagues via Microsoft Teams or Microsoft Outlook, it is only natural to want to be able to access SAP data right where you are, rather than having to leave your context and go to separate windows to access the data. Hence we are working on integrating Microsoft Copilot with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, and continuing with the Beta program which I introduced to you in my July blog post. Find out more:

AI-Based UX Innovations for SAP Fiori Apps

Here I will focus on the AI-assisted innovations powered by SAP Fiori elements and SAP Business AI. Beyond these, I’d like to call out these two new capabilities which provide a great user experience thanks to AI and which are now generally available:

  • Cost Center Review Booklet, which uses AI to summarize financial reporting data in easy-to-understand language, which I features as a Beta in my July blog post. (An example of the Summarizing AI pattern).
  • Configuration for US tax jurisdictions, which uses SAP Business AI to make light work of something otherwise very complex and tricky (An example of the Creating Proposals AI pattern).

To get an overview of all of these and more have a look at these updates:

We are giving away something for free! We will give you free access to the underlying AI technology for the generally available AI-assisted features described below until end of July 2025! Interested? Sign-up for the Limited Promotion for AI-assisted Features in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

AI-Assisted Easy Filter

This is an example of the AI pattern Interacting via natural language with your application:  in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, you can now easily filter lists in SAP Fiori elements list reports using natural language, rather than manually setting the filters for each field in the filter bar. We use SAP Business AI to interpret the query and identify the appropriate filter values. What is really cool is that the filter values identified are also displayed at the top of the list, so users can get confirmation that their text has been correctly interpreted. Figure 6 shows an example.

Figure 6: AI-assisted easy filter allows you to filter business data using natural language in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502. ALT Text: The Manage Sales Orders – Version 2 app is shown with one text entry field above the list of orders, containing the text “Show me all open sales orders with a delivery date for last quarter”. To the right of the text field the “Go” button has the AI icon on the left of the Go text. Below the text entry field identified filters are shown: Overall Status “Open”, Requested Delivery Date “10/01/2024 – 12/31/2024”.Figure 6: AI-assisted easy filter allows you to filter business data using natural language in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502. ALT Text: The Manage Sales Orders – Version 2 app is shown with one text entry field above the list of orders, containing the text “Show me all open sales orders with a delivery date for last quarter”. To the right of the text field the “Go” button has the AI icon on the left of the Go text. Below the text entry field identified filters are shown: Overall Status “Open”, Requested Delivery Date “10/01/2024 – 12/31/2024”.

Watch it in action here:

AI-Assisted Smart Summarization

As you may have guessed, this is an example of the Summarizing AI pattern, where users of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition can use the new smart summarization capability to generate personalizable summaries of object pages based on SAP Fiori elements. You simply select the sections you want to have included in the summary, and let smart summarization create a summary for you. You can edit the result, and copy it into your clipboard with just one click, ready to paste into an e-mail, chat or document. Figure 7 shows an example of a summary. If you want to see how to select the sections, watch this:

Figure 7: AI-Assisted Smart Summarization generates summaries of object pages based on SAP Fiori elements in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502. ALT Text: A popover is shown with formatted text, the Header saying “Order Summary”, followed by a brief description and then sections for “Data and Location”, with three bullet points for requested delivery date, document date and shipping address, “Key Highlights”, showing overall status, billing block status, net value and net sales volume (YTD). Only the section header “Summary Statistics” is visible at the bottom, the vertical scroll bar on the right indicates that there is more below.Figure 7: AI-Assisted Smart Summarization generates summaries of object pages based on SAP Fiori elements in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502. ALT Text: A popover is shown with formatted text, the Header saying “Order Summary”, followed by a brief description and then sections for “Data and Location”, with three bullet points for requested delivery date, document date and shipping address, “Key Highlights”, showing overall status, billing block status, net value and net sales volume (YTD). Only the section header “Summary Statistics” is visible at the bottom, the vertical scroll bar on the right indicates that there is more below.

Beta: AI-Assisted Error Explanation

New users who are unfamiliar with the system may find that the short error messages give too little information for them to fully understand the issue, and what to do about it. This is where the Summarizing and Guiding and Recommending AI-patterns can help: the AI-Assisted Error Explanation (beta) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition uses these to summarize information which explains the error and provide a recommendation for how to resolve it. Figure 8 shows an example where a user has entered a Sold-to-Party ID which does not exist in the system.

Note that this feature is also only available for applications based on SAP Fiori elements.

Figure 8: AI-Assisted Error Explanation (Beta) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502. ALT Text: On the left part of a data entry screen is shown, with the field “Sold-to Party containing “ABC” marked red and below that a popover with an error message “No customer master record exists for sold-to-party ABC”, and in the text line below that the AI icon followed by “Generate Explanation”. A fat arrow leads from this text to the image on the right, which indicates what happens when you click on this text: you get a popover with an short Explanation section and a longer Resolution section with numbered actions.Figure 8: AI-Assisted Error Explanation (Beta) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502. ALT Text: On the left part of a data entry screen is shown, with the field “Sold-to Party containing “ABC” marked red and below that a popover with an error message “No customer master record exists for sold-to-party ABC”, and in the text line below that the AI icon followed by “Generate Explanation”. A fat arrow leads from this text to the image on the right, which indicates what happens when you click on this text: you get a popover with an short Explanation section and a longer Resolution section with numbered actions.

Have a look:

Situation Handling

The Situation Handling framework helps users deal with not-so-frequent business situations, by notifying them of the situation, giving them an overview of the situation and providing contextual information to help resolve it. Ideally, the system also offers recommendations on how to go about resolving it.

Beta: AI-Assisted Situation Handling

With this release you can beta test a new feature which generates such recommendations using SAP Business AI. This is an example of the Guiding and Recommending AI pattern.

Figure 9 shows what this looks like for a situation where a purchase contract is going to expire soon. The system is able to evaluate the company policy, in this case provided in the form of a decision matrix, and informs the user that a Request for Proposals is not needed for this contract, since its contract value is below the threshold.

Figure 9: AI-Assisted Situation Handling (Beta) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502, showing how the user is notified in My Home and can navigate to the situation page and there generate a recommended solution. ALT Text: The To-Do card “The purchase contract will expire soon” is shown at the top, with an arrow leading to the image below of the situation page, showing a “General Info” section and a “Recommended Solution” section, which only contains the text “You haven’t generated a solution yet. Would you like to do that now”, along with a “Generate” button with the AI icon. From there an arrow leads to the bottom image which shows the recommended solution text, along with thumbs-up and thumbs-down feedback buttons.Figure 9: AI-Assisted Situation Handling (Beta) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2502, showing how the user is notified in My Home and can navigate to the situation page and there generate a recommended solution. ALT Text: The To-Do card “The purchase contract will expire soon” is shown at the top, with an arrow leading to the image below of the situation page, showing a “General Info” section and a “Recommended Solution” section, which only contains the text “You haven’t generated a solution yet. Would you like to do that now”, along with a “Generate” button with the AI icon. From there an arrow leads to the bottom image which shows the recommended solution text, along with thumbs-up and thumbs-down feedback buttons.

If you are interested in testing any of the above AI-assisted innovations, you can register here.

UX Improvements in Details

As I never tire of saying: the details matter if you want to provide a great UX! We continue to work on these details, which can often result in higher satisfaction for users. With the 2502 release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, we bring you the following improvements.

Column Size Persisted in Flexible Column Layout

When users open up an application which uses the Flexible Column Layout, it will now remember where the user had placed the separator last time, rather than putting it in the default position. Figure 10 shows an example where at the top you see the default position, and below you see the separator moved to the right slightly, so that all the text is visible in the table on the left. Next time the app is opened, the separator will open in the same place.

Figure 10: Flexible Column Layout now remembers the previously used column width. The image at the top shows the default column width, the image below shows the last column width the user chose. ALT Text: two images of Manage Cost Centers application is shown, the upper one has the separator bar between the list on the left and the details on the right further to the left than the image on the right.Figure 10: Flexible Column Layout now remembers the previously used column width. The image at the top shows the default column width, the image below shows the last column width the user chose. ALT Text: two images of Manage Cost Centers application is shown, the upper one has the separator bar between the list on the left and the details on the right further to the left than the image on the right.

New Options for Filtering Dates (Semantic Date Range)

We have two new features here:

  • We now offer the semantic date range also for selecting dates in the table settings dialog, if you want to define a specific filter on a given field in the table. (Note that the table settings dialog allows you to define filters on all the fields in the table, irrespective of which fields appear in the filter bar at the top of the screen).
  • I’m pleased to say that, on request of many users, we now provide the option to define filters on date fields for the “Last X days/weeks/months/… to date” as well as the “Next X days/weeks/months/… to date”, where users can specify the number “X”.

An example of how tricky such seemingly simple things can be: if, on December 11th, you choose “Last 2 months to date”, do you mean the period from November 1st to December 11th, which would be up to the current date but not a full two months, or do you mean “the last two full months”, i.e. October 1st to November 30th? Since both make sense, the selection screen gives users the option to choose, with the default being the “full month” case, described as “exclude current period”, as you can see in Figure 11.

Figure 11: New option for semantic date range. ALT Text: A list of cost centers shown in the Manage Cost Centers application, with a popover below the “Valid On” field in the filter bar showing “Last X Days / Weeks / Months / …”, a field for entering the number (2), a field for the unit of time (Months) and radio buttons to select “Exclude current period, with the period shown below the button ( 01.10.2024 – 30.11.2024)” or “Include current period (01.11.2024 – 11.12.2024)”.Figure 11: New option for semantic date range. ALT Text: A list of cost centers shown in the Manage Cost Centers application, with a popover below the “Valid On” field in the filter bar showing “Last X Days / Weeks / Months / …”, a field for entering the number (2), a field for the unit of time (Months) and radio buttons to select “Exclude current period, with the period shown below the button ( 01.10.2024 – 30.11.2024)” or “Include current period (01.11.2024 – 11.12.2024)”.

Far More Options for Key Users to Adapt UIs

Key users can now make far more significant changes to UIs than before. For example, they can add a button to clear all filter values in the filter bar, remove buttons such as the “Export to Excel”, and much more. Figure 12 shows the options for configuring a table for example.

Figure 12: Many more options for Key Users to adapt UIs. ALT Text: UI Adaptation is shown switched on for the application Manage Bank Hierarchies, with a popover called “Configure Table” filling half the screen, and showing 12 options such as “Enable Table Export”, “Frozen Column Count” with a field for entering the number, “Sorting”, “Columns” etc.Figure 12: Many more options for Key Users to adapt UIs. ALT Text: UI Adaptation is shown switched on for the application Manage Bank Hierarchies, with a popover called “Configure Table” filling half the screen, and showing 12 options such as “Enable Table Export”, “Frozen Column Count” with a field for entering the number, “Sorting”, “Columns” etc.

Automatic Update of SAP Fiori Apps Upon Change of Data

There are quite a few cases where users would appreciate seeing absolutely up-to-date data in their application, so that the data is automatically updated if changes occur in the backend. These changes could be made by other users, or by automated background processing . An example for the latter is the Traceability Results application, which is now automatically updated if a batch run has created new traceability items.

Note that this only supported by applications built with SAP Fiori elements using OData V4.

 

Continue Reading…

I hope you enjoyed this second part, covering SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and SAP Fiori launchpad. Part 3 is now available, covering a large number of UX innovations in SAP SuccessFactors:

Do keep posting your experiences and recommendations yourself in the SAP Community, with the SAP Fiori and/or the User Experience tag! In case you are wondering how to get a list of the most recent blog posts on SAP Fiori and User Experience in our new SAP Community, use these links:

Labels in this area
Popular Blog Posts